Duplicate ebooks in the Calibre Library

[inl1ner]

Hi @all,

I have been working for about 3 weeks on my Calibre library of nearly 7,000 books and realize that there are many duplicate entries, but they were originally declared differently.

What happens if I delete a book from the library?
If the original source file is also deleted?
If not, how do I find them, to delete them also, since they have different descriptions?


Thanks in advance
inl1ner

[theducks]

Originally Posted by inl1ner

Hi @all,

I have been working for about 3 weeks on my Calibre library of nearly 7,000 books and realize that there are many duplicate entries, but they were originally declared differently.

What happens if I delete a book from the library?
If the original source file is also deleted?
If not, how do I find them, to delete them also, since they have different descriptions?


Thanks in advance
inl1ner

The Library is only the Library.
Once the import has completed (or the edit metadata window if that was where you were adding formats/covers) closes. the library disconnects from the source file

.

Only use the 'delete' inside the Library GUI to remove books or formats so as to maintain the integrity of the DB.
Never use the OS to delete or rename Library books or folders.

[Adoby]

I usually add just a few books at a time to calibre, and save the originals in separate folders with date and time as folder name.

That way I can use date added to figure out where the original file is.

I never delete any of the originals. There are many duplicates, but they don't take up much space. I might archive the folders using 7Zip or something similar.

[inl1ner]

Thanks to theducks and Adoby,

it all makes sense to me, but what happens to the Calibre DB if I delete for example all the original books?

Greetings
in1ner

[BookJunkieLI]

Deleting book files outside of Calibre's library directory has no affect on Calibre. The issue would be if you went into the Calibre library directory and started deleting books.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by inl1ner

Thanks to theducks and Adoby,

it all makes sense to me, but what happens to the Calibre DB if I delete for example all the original books?

Greetings
in1ner

Nothing

Think of this.

If I throw books into the (user designated) Auto-add folder, calibre trows those away after adding the into the Library.

You or Calibre.... No diff

[Adoby]

If you add a book to calibre an identical copy of the original book is made and copied into the library. The only thing that differs from the original file is the filename.

The main reason to archive the originals is if you do conversions and only want to keep one file format. For instance if you add a public domain mobi book, and convert it to epub and delete the mobi. Then there might perhaps be problems in the conversion that you don't discover at once, and it can save time and effort to have the original book on hand. I only have epub and pdf books. And convert as needed and delete all other formats.

It was quite a while ago since I had to get an archived original book back from archive, so perhaps it is a little too paranoid... I may start to just delete the originals once the book has been added to calibre and I have a verified backup of the calibre library.

[inl1ner]

Thank theducks, BookJunkieLI and especially Adoby,

these are very encouraging informations for me, because it means that the original files are on my NAS in security and I can delete the local files on my PC without affecting the work with Calibre.

I wish you a nice weekend
inl1ner